National Identity Fraud Prevention Week, learn how to protect yourself

So serious has the ID fraud problem become that crime prevention and credit reference agencies have teamed up once again to launch National Identity Fraud Prevention Week, which runs between 16-22 October, 2006. The theory is that as indentity crime revolves around stealing identities from individuals and businesses, if crooks are halted at the initial stage, it will have a huge impact in the battle against this type of crime.

Of course, what would really knock identity fraud on the head and stop people impersonating someone else is biometric proof of identity such as the identity card recently mooted by the Home Office coincidentally the week before the launch of the anti-fraud campaign!

However, you may, as many people are, be suspicious of Government motives. Nevertheless, until, a fool-proof system is in place, it is in your interest to protect yourself from identity fraud mainly because if it happens to you may not lose any money but it's a hassle you could well do without.

Despite the fact that most us are aware of identity fraud as being a threat, we are not doing as much as we could to protect ourselves, according to a survey by research company Populus. Its study into the contents of bins found that 77% of household waste contained at least one or more items that displayed our personal details. This means that 18 million homes out of the total of 24.5 million in this country are making it easy for crooks to steal their identity.

What you might think of as rubbish, is as good as money to a fraudster. They can use your personal details to apply for credit cards, store cards, loans and even mortgages. All they need is your date of birth, address, mother's maiden name and passwords to apply for bank accounts, credit cards and loans.

It has been esitmated that we have a one in 1,000 chance of becoming a victim of ID fraud. Research from YouGov found that young people under 30 are the most vulnerable to ID fraud. This is because many make the mistake of divulging personal details such as passwords to friends or members of their family and they do not check their credit records with credit reference agencies because they don't know how to.

Many young people were also unaware how personal details in letters and bills could be used by criminals to apply for loans using a false identity. Another group that is vulnerable is people moving home because they often they fail to redirect their mail enabling crooks to intercept it and make use of the information.